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The Weather Channel is now indoctrinating children to lecture to their parents about so-called “global warming.” But here are some inconvenient facts for these left-wing alarmists:

The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim — from A to Z — the promoters of manmade climate fears are falling short or going in the opposite direction.

Global temperatures have been virtually flat for about 18 years according to satellite data, and peer-reviewed literature is now scaling back predictions of future warming. 

The U.S. has had no Category 3 or larger hurricane make landfall since 2005 – the longest spell since the Civil War. 

Strong F3 or larger tornadoes have been in decline since the 1970s. 

Despite claims of snow being ‘a thing of the past,’ cold season snowfall has been rising. 

Sea level rise rates have been steady for over a century, with recent deceleration. 

Droughts and floods are neither historically unusual nor caused by mankind, and there is no evidence we are currently having any unusual weather. 

So-called hottest year claims are based on year-to-year temperature data that differs by only a few HUNDREDTHS of a degree to tenths of a degree Fahrenheit – differences that are within the margin of error in the data. In other words, global temperatures have essentially held very steady with no sign of acceleration. 

A 2015 NASA study found Antarctica was NOT losing ice mass and ‘not currently contributing to sea level rise.’ 

2016 Arctic sea ice was 22 percent greater than the recent low point of 2012. The Arctic sea ice is now in a 10-year ‘pause’ with ‘no significant change in the past decade.’  

Deaths due to extreme weather have declined dramatically. 

Polar bears are doing fine, with their numbers way up since the 1960s.

Have climate change skeptics lost the climate debate?

No! Climate skepticism enjoys huge popularity in polling data, and every time a climate bill has come before the U.S. Congress it has failed to pass. There never was any real climate debate! One of the key reasons climate fear proponents don’t want to debate is what happened during a pivotal high-profile debate in 2007 in New York City, where skeptics were voted the clear winners against global warming proponents.
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt appeared so demoralized at losing that debate that he announced debates equally split between believers in a climate ‘crisis’ and scientific skeptics are probably not “worthwhile” to ever agree to again. And climate change promoters listened, with debates becoming rarer and rarer.
In fact, instead of engaging in debates, prominent climate activists now call for jailing skeptics. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., declared he wanted to jail his climate skeptics. “They ought to be serving time for it,” Kennedy said in 2014.

Less than two years ago, extremists on the far Left fringe and their media lemmings in Arizona and around the nation successfully waged a campaign of fear, deceit and distortion against a state religious freedom bill, HB 1062. They stampeded Gov. Jan Brewer into fearfully vetoing this harmless, but helpful, bill. Virtually every television station in Arizona bought the lies of homosexual activists … hook, line and sinker, and engaged in yellow journalism. Even a Phoenix sportscaster, Mike Jurecki, foolishly shot off his mouth about what the bill would not do, further spreading the Big Lie, the Big Narrative of the Left. We saw again how gullible, how ignorant and misinformed and how horribly misguided the left-stream media really is. And just how easily the left-stream media could be led by extreme leftists, without pretending to be fair or factual.

Outside of The Arizona Conservative, there were few in this state who really stood up to speak the truth to this manufactured “crisis.”

Now Ryan Anderson of The Heritage Foundation has addressed what happened here — in his book “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom.” He writes the following in Chapter 5: Religious Freedom: A Basic Human Right. We think this is well worth your read:

In February 2014, the State of Arizona considered a minor legislative clarification to its state RFRA, attracting incendiary media coverage. The New York Times editorialized that the Arizona legislation had passed “noxious measures to give businesses and individuals the broad right to deny services to same-sex couples in the name of protecting religious liberty.”

The Times got it wrong. The Arizona bill, an amendment to the stat’s 1999 RFRA protections, never even mentioned same-sex couples. In provided that the RFRA protections would extend to any “state action” and would apply to “any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution or other business organization. In other words, the bill would have protected all citizens and the associations they form from undue burdens by the government on their religious liberty and from private lawsuits that would have the same effect.

Kirsten Powers jumped into the fray with a USA Today column misleadingly titled “Arizona Latest to Attack Gay Rights.” She warned that the law “would result in nothing less than chaos,” even though the federal government has operated under the same rules for twenty years and Arizona had had similar protections since 1999. A bipartisan group of law professors set the record straight in a letter to Governor Jan Brewer:

The bill has been egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics …

We should not punish people for practicing their religion unless we have a very good reason. Arizona has had a RFRA for nearly fifteen years now; the federal government has had one since 1993; and RFRA’s standard was the constitutional standard for the entire country from 1963 to 1990 …

[The proposed law] would amend the Arizona RFRA to address two ambiguities that have been the subject of litigation under other RFRA’s. It would provide that people are covered when state or local government requires them to violate their religion in the conduct of their businesses, and it would provide that people are covered when sued by a private citizen invoking state or local law to demand that they violate their religion.

The rhetoric about giving bigots a license not to serve gays and lesbians was simply nonsensical. Indeed, religious liberty claims in connection with same-sex marriage have never been about turning away certain persons or groups, but about not endorsing certain actions or ceremonies.

But the lies worked, and Governor Brewer, a Republican, vetoed the bill. Among those applying pressure were Arizona’s two Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, as well as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney [and State Senator Bob Worsley], showing that both political parties are susceptible to abandoning principle once the media dial up the heat. Or big business. National Football League officials expressed concern about holding the Super Bowl in Arizona, as scheduled, should the religious liberty bill be enacted.

The scholar’s letter flew right over the head of the frightened governor, who vetoed the bill and got the rabid radicals off her back.

The National Climate Assessment – 2014 (NCA) is a masterpiece of marketing that shows for the first time the full capabilities of the Obama Administration to spin a scientific topic as they see fit, without regard to the underlying facts. With hundreds of pages written by hundreds of captive scientists and marketing specialists, the administration presents their case for extreme climate alarm.

however scary, is not proof of anything. Science derives its objectivity from robust logic and honest evidence repeatedly tested by all knowledgeable scientists, not just those paid to support the administration’s version of “Global Warming,” “Climate Change,” “Climate Disruption,” or whatever their marketing specialists call it today.

We are asked to believe that humans are drastically changing the earth’s climate by burning fossil fuels. The problem with their theory is very simple: It is NOT true. Here we address the administration’s basic thesis and the essential evidence that they claim support extreme concern.

The theory of ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming’ (CAGW) is based on a string of inferences that begins with the assumptions that carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse gas’ and that we are slowly driving up the atmospheric concentration by burning fossil fuels.

It is therefore claimed as self-evident that the Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) has already risen significantly and will continue to do so. Higher GAST is then presumed to lead to all sorts of negative consequences, especially Extreme Weather. They promote their ‘Climate Models’ as a reliable way to predict the future climate. But these models dramatically fail basic verification tests. Nowhere do they admit to these well-known failures. Instead, we are led to believe that their climate models are close to perfection.

This document is structured around a “fact-check,” where we quote a number of the government’s key claims in the NCA and show each to be invalid. The first three claims involve their three crucial scientific arguments (Three Lines of Evidence or 3 LoE), which, if valid, would satisfy a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for making their case. But each is easily shown to be false; and because each is crucial, their entire theory collapses. That means that all of the overblown “Climate Disruption” evidence that they mention, whether true or not, cannot be tied back to man’s burning of fossil fuels. Hence, efforts to reduce or eliminate Extreme Weather by reducing the burning of fossil fuels are completely nonsensical.

“The conclusion that human influences are the primary driver of recent climate change is based on multiple lines of independent evidence. The first line of evidence is our fundamental understanding of how certain gases trap heat, how the climate system responds to increases in these gases, and how other human and natural factors influence climate.”

(NCA, Page 23)

RESPONSE:

Many scientists have provided ample evidence that the government’s finding, used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is grossly flawed. In its Endangerment Finding, EPA claimed with 90-99% certainty that observed warming in the latter half of the twentieth century resulted from human activity. Using the most credible empirical data available, it is relatively straightforward to soundly reject each of EPA’s Three LoE.

EPA’s Greenhouse Gas ‘Hot Spot’ theory is that in the tropics, the mid-troposphere must warm faster than the lower troposphere, and the lower troposphere must warm faster than the surface, all due to rising CO2 concentrations. However, this is totally at odds with multiple robust, consistent, independently-derived empirical datasets, all showing no statistically significant positive (or negative) trend in temperature and thus, no difference in trend slope by altitude. Therefore, EPA’s theory as to how CO2 impacts GAST must be rejected. Below is a graphical comparison of their Hot Spot theory versus reality, where reds denote warming and blues, cooling. Clearly, the government’s understanding of how CO2 gas traps heat is fundamentally flawed.

Models (top) vs. Measured Temperatures Changes (bottom) Latitude

NCA CLAIM #2:

“Second LoE – Unusual Warming in recent decades”

“The second line of evidence is from reconstructions of past climates using evidence such as tree rings, ice cores, and corals. These show that global surface temperatures over the last several decades are clearly unusual, with the last decade (2000-2009) warmer than any time in at least the last 1,300 years and perhaps much longer.”

(NCA, Page 23)

RESPONSE:

“Global Warming” has not been global and has not set regional records where warming has occurred. For example, over the last fifty years, while the Arctic has warmed, the tropical oceans had a flat trend (see e.g. NOAA Buoy Data: NINO 3.4, Degrees C, available at http://www.cpc.ncep. noaa.gov/data/indices/ersst3b.nino.mth.81-10.ascii,) and the Antarctic cooled slightly. The most significant warming during this period occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, north of the tropics but that ceased over the last 15 years or more. Also, as the figure below shows, over the last 130 years the decade of the 1930’s still has the most U.S. State High Temperatures records. And, over the past 50 years, there were more new State Record Lowsset than Record Highs. In fact, roughly 70% of the current State Record Highs were set prior to 1940.

If the observed warming over the last half century can anywhere be claimed to be unusual, it would have to be where it was greatest – in the Arctic. Both satellite and surface station data show a warming of about two degrees Celsius since the 1970’s. But the surface station data (see the Figure below) show that warming in context. Recent warming was very similar to the previous warming from 1900 to 1940, reaching virtually the same peak. This refutes the government claim that recent warming (which occurred when man-made CO2 was rising) was notably different from an era when man-made CO2 was not claimed to be a factor. It also points out an essential feature of most credible thermometer records that cover many decades.

Our climate is highly cyclical, driven in fact by ocean and solar cycles, not carbon dioxide. Using only the upward trend of the most recent half cycle to suggest relentless warming is very deceptive.

NCA CLAIM #3: Thir LoE – “The Climate Models”

The third line of evidence comes from using climate models to simulate the climate of the past century, separating the human and natural factors that influence climate.

(NCA, Page 24)

RESPONSE:

The Administration relied upon Climate Models, all predicated on the GHG Hot Spot Theory, that all fail standard model validation and forecast reliability tests. These

Climate Models are simulations of reality and far from exact solutions of the fundamental physics.

The models all forecast rising temperatures beyond 2000 although the GAST trend has recently been flat. See the figure below. This is not surprising because EPA never carried out any published forecast reliability tests. The government’s hugely expensive climate models are monumental failures.

Model Lower Tropospheric Temperature forecasts versus actual

NCA CLAIM #4:

“Extreme Weather – Temperatures” “global temperatures are still on the rise and are expected to rise further.”

(NCA, Page 8)

“The most recent decade was the nation’s and the world’s hottest on record, and 2012 was the hottest year on record in the continental United States. All U.S. regions have experienced warming in recent decades, but the extent of warming has not been uniform. (NCA, Page 8)

RESPONSE: As mentioned in the response to CLAIM #2, most of the warming in the second half of the 20th century occurred north of the tropics. But this warming stopped over 17 years ago. Furthermore, the Hadley Centre (upon which the government and the UN IPCC heavily relied) recently announced a forecast that the GAST trend line will likely remain flat for another five years. See Decadal forecast, METOFFICE, http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc

As for claims about record setting U.S. temperatures, please see our response to CLAIM #2 above.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) wascriticalof the draft National Climate

Assessment, saying that “An overly narrow focus can encourage one-sided solutions, for instance by giving an impression that reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone will solve all of the major environmental concerns discussed in this report.” The NAS has also criticized “the lack of explicit discussion about the uncertainties associated with the regional model projections,” saying that “Decision makers need a clear understanding of these uncertainties in order to fairly evaluate the actual utility of using these projections as a basis for planning decisions.”

NCA CLAIM #5 “Extreme Weather – Hurricanes”

“The intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s.”

(NCA, Page 20)

“Extreme Weather – “Droughts and Floods” “both extreme wetness and extreme dryness are projected to increase in many areas.”

(NCA, Page 33)

RESPONSE:

According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC,) there is “high agreement” among leading experts that long-term trends in weather disasters are not attributable to our use of fossil fuels.

Hurricanes have not increased in the United States in frequency, intensity, or normalized damage since at least 1900. Currently, the U.S. is enjoying a period of over eight years without a Category 3 or stronger hurricane making landfall. Government data also indicate no association between use of fossil fuels and tornado activity. The data on droughts paint a similar picture.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that “Climate change was not a significant part” of the recent drought in Texas. And the IPCC found that “in some regions , droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, central North America ….”

The IPCC also states there is “low confidence” in any climate-related trends for flood magnitude or frequency on a global scale.

Still More NCA CLAIMS

RESPONSE:

All of the other government claims worth discussing have been answered effectively in other commentaries. These include those related to ocean and lake ice levels, sea levels, and ocean alkalinity. Detailed rebuttals of such government claims can be found in reports available from CATO, CEI, Climate Depot, Heritage, ICECAP, TWTW, and WUWT.

SUMMARY

The Obama Administration’s National Climate Assessment begins with probably their most preposterous claims:

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.”

(NCA, Page 1)

“Evidence for climate change abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans.”

(NCA, Page 7)

“There is still time to act to limit the amount of change and the extent of damaging impacts”

(NCA, Page 2)

RESPONSE:

This is pure rhetorical nonsense born of a cynical attempt to exploit short-term memories and/or little knowledge of the Earth’s climate history and climate processes.

Our climate is constantly changing for perfectly natural reasons that have nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

With the Earth’s vast oceans and atmosphere never in complete equilibrium, our climate will always be changing on time scales from weeks to months to years to decades to centuries and beyond. With a star varying cyclically as our heat source and with an enormous planet like Jupiter tugging on our orbit around the Sun, dramatic climate changes are expected to occur. (See pages 39-50 in USCA, Case #09-1322, Document #1312291, Filed: 06/08/2011.)

However, none of these dramatic climate changes have any connection to our use of fossil fuels. Yet the Obama Administration insists on building a House of Cards predicated on their Three Lines of Evidence as discussed in CLAIMS 1, 2, and 3 above. With all three of their Lines of Evidence shown to be invalid, their entire House of Cards collapses. For example, if increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations do not yield higher GAST, the claimed CO2 connection to higher sea levels is lost. What about their frequent claims that nearly all scientists agree with their analysis findings? By ignoring and even denouncing growing criticism, they have lost the benefit of crucial scientific debates which are critical to keeping their analyses honest and objective. In fact, as documented above in response to Claims 4 and 5, they are even disregarding their usual allies, the UN IPCC and US National Academy of Sciences, both of whom have been dialing back apocalyptic claims, not amplifying them due at least in part to such critical feedback.

Bottom-Line: This NCA is so grossly flawed it should play no role in U.S. Energy Policy Analyses and CO2 regulatory processes. As this rebuttal makes clear, the NCA provides no scientific basis whatsoever for regulating CO2 emissions.

George Taylor Certified Consulting Meteorologist President Applied Climate Services Two time President of the American Association of State Climatologists B.A. Mathematics, University of California M.S. Meteorology University of Utah